About half an hour: that’s the amount of sleep you can gain by doing a little physical exercise in the evening in front of the television. These are the conclusions of a new study by researchers from the University of Otago in New Zealand, quoted by The Independent.
These light activities, which include things like chair squats and calf raises, lead to a better night’s sleep and potentially reduce the risk of diabetes and heart disease. Enough to relieve the 40% of French people who say they have trouble falling asleep, according to a Toluna Harris Interactive survey in 2023.
But not too much! Science also says, despite some debate among the research community, that practicing a sport too intensively could lead to poor quality sleep. The fault lies in an increase in body temperature and heart rate, according to Jennifer Gale, doctor and lead author of the study.
She therefore recommends “short, low-intensity exercises, for two to three minutes every half hour. So as not to overstimulate the heart and to preserve the internal temperature.”
It was under these conditions that the thirty participants in the study observed an increase, on average, of about half an hour in their sleep time. To do this, they compared two types of four-hour evenings: one while sitting, the other while getting up for a few exercises every thirty minutes.
Chores can be enough
The researchers recommended three exercises: chair squats, calf raises and standing hip extensions. Activities “simple and bodyweight-based, chosen because they do not require special equipment or a lot of space, and because they can be done without interrupting your TV schedule”explains co-author Meredith Peddie.
But the exercises can be even simpler. Researchers say you can get the same effects by walking around your house or apartment, marching in place, or doing household chores. Even dancing around your living room can work.
The important thing is not to give in to the temptation of staying slumped on the sofa, a rather attractive prospect after a day’s work. “For many of us, the evening is the time of day when we spend the most time, and uninterruptedly, sitting, adds Jennifer Gale. One of our previous studies showed that getting up and doing two to three minutes of light exercise reduced the amount of sugar and fat that remains in our blood after a meal.”
The challenge of this new study was therefore to tackle the “main recommendations that advise against excessively intense sport before going to sleep, she says. We wanted to know what happened with very light physical activities repeated throughout the evening.”
Further experiments must still confirm these findings and biologically explain causality. In the meantime, this discovery offers a great opportunity to improve the quality of one’s sleep without changing one’s habits too much.
Source: www.slate.fr
